


and iʼd give up forever to touch you

by Lire_Casander



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Coma, Hospitals, M/M, Mentions of Car Accidents, Mentions of Injuries, Mentions of Machine failure, Mentions of Shooting, Mentions of a Coma, Mentions of hospitals, Panic Attacks, Serious Injuries, Shooting, Unconscious Character, mentions of panic attack, reflections on death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27046135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: the beeping hasn't stopped and it gives carlos both hope and takes his breath away
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Comments: 17
Kudos: 78
Collections: The Tarlos Variable





	and iʼd give up forever to touch you

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta’ed. i only used grammarly for some glaring typos and expressions.
> 
> title from _iris_ by goo goo dolls
> 
> written for the following prompt: **_“i just want to hug you”_**
> 
> see, [FirstDegreeFan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstdegreefangir), [Meloingly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meloingly), [ThirteenRedVampireBites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirteenRedVampireBites) and myself wanted to make a small experiment where we all took the same prompt, gave ourselves some time to work on it, and then post it with the minimum editing, just to see how the same prompt written in the same(ish) amount of time would change from one to another. this is my take on said prompt. go check the other posted works at the Ao3 collection [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/The_Tarlos_Variable/profile)

The light is filtering through the half-closed blinds. Carlos groans when it hits him square on the wrinkles between his eyebrows. There’s a spot in his neck that protests when he looks up, stiff in places where it shouldn’t be. He lifts his weight, balancing it on his elbows as he chances a first glance to the bed. 

The beeping hasn't stopped, and it gives Carlos both hope and takes his breath away. 

They shouldn’t be here again. It wasn't in their plans. He never wanted this outcome. And yet, here they are. 

Carlos sighs as he rubs his eyes in an attempt to chase the slumber away. He hasnʼt been able to sleep properly ever since the accident, and he’s in a state of permanent exhaustion. He wonʼt move from this bedside, though. He wonʼt risk the slim possibility of TK waking up and finding himself alone in a strange place — the last time he’d been conscious, the scenery had been completely different. 

He begins his daily routine of checking everything around him. The machines are working correctly, their lights a testimony of the life they’re keeping. The heart rate monitor still irks his nerves, even though he’s managed to tune out its noises, but he still glances up at the display, those lines steadily signaling that TK’s heart is in fact still beating. Carlos sighs before looking back to the figure on the bed, still and silent in an unnatural way.

TK Strand has never been anything but boisterous, active and energetic. Full of life.

Carlos misses every single aspect of him, even those tiny details that he used to hate so much.

“Good morning, tiger,” he begins, another daily routine. “How are you feeling today? Any hint that you might be opening those pretty green eyes of yours? Believe me,” he chuckles humorlessly. “Believe me when I say that I really _need_ you to. It’s been way too long, Ty.”

Of course, he doesn’t get to see his wishes granted, for TK doesn’t even budge. Carlos swallows around the choking lump in his throat — another constant for the past never-ending days — before continuing his speech. He believes that, even if he isn’t getting any response to his words, TK’s actually _hearing_ him.

He needs to, in order to get through the long days and the endless nights. He needs to, if he doesn’t want to wither away in a hospital room.

He needs to, in order to survive in the unthinkable case that TK _doesn’t_.

“I’m still on medical leave,” he keeps talking. “There’s nothing really wrong with me, physically. But Dr. Poynce doesn’t want to risk me getting back to work just in case. You know, they think I might have a mental breakdown or something on a shift. And I—Ty, I actually think they’re right.”

Carlos remains silent for a moment, fighting the tears back. “I understand now. I didn’t, when you first told me that everything was gray. But now, now I understand. I miss you so much, TK. I miss our nights in, I miss our jokes, I miss _you_. And it’s driving me crazy because, because I just want to—I want to—”

He bites down on his lip, the tears now freely rolling down his cheeks. He doesn’t try to wipe them. Carlos is furious, but his anger is only ever directed to himself — for being weak, for crying, for breaking down when he knows TK needs a rock by his side. But as much as he’s been TK’s beacon throughout the years they’ve spent together, TK has become his silver lining.

He wishes he could revert to how things were before — he wishes he could erase the last few weeks off existence, and pick up their life right before he stopped the car at a red light.

He knows life will never be the same, he told Michelle so the first — and only — time that she tried to get him to spend the night back at home after the accident. When Carlos had realized that there was no weight on TKʼs side of the bed, when his brain had finally caught up, it had felt like drowning. 

The panic attack following that particular realization had been powerful enough to scare Michelle and send him back to the ER. 

Carlos has been fighting his own demons ever since. He hasnʼt been allowed to be on his own, and heʼs fought everything and everyone to keep his visitation rights. He thinks he might have definitely lost it had he not been able to sit by TKʼs side every day. 

It's not only that he misses their banter, their slow nights when he would cook and TK would flitter around the kitchen, their dinner dates by the lake. Carlos finds himself missing the intimacy and the touches, but not only the lewdest ones. 

Carlos has had to stop himself from reaching out to TKʼs unmoving form, because as much as he misses touching him, the downfall of realizing that TK isn’t touching him back would be worse than this reality. 

And Carlos really, really, really _fucking_ misses the feeling of TKʼs skin on his own skin. 

“I just—I just want to hug you, okay?” he finally breaks, his voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t want to imagine a life where I don’t get to touch you. I don’t want to _live_ a life where I have to remember you.”

He hears Owen sniffling behind him. Carlos doesn’t know for how long he’s been staying there, waiting for the right moment to let his presence known. It’s become an unspoken agreement between them — Carlos pours his heart out every single second to an unconscious TK, and Owen allows him time for grievance even if he never leaves them alone. Carlos is actually thankful for that, even if he’s not able to voice that feeling yet.

Maybe someday. But not today.

Carlos lowers his head until his forehead touches the white sheets covering TKʼs body, rivaling with his skin in paleness beneath the fluorescent lights of the hospital. He doesn’t feel strong enough to face anyone, but Owen is suffering just as much as he does — if not more.

“Have you spent the night again, Carlos?” he hears at his back. He doesn’t need to turn around to know that Owen is at the door, silently leaning onto the frame. “I remember the doctors recommending you rest. Quite distinctly.” 

“It was a _recommendation_ ,” Carlos replies without looking over his shoulder. He doesn’t need to do that to picture Owen Strand waiting nervously at the threshold, right arm in a sling and blue shadows underneath his eyes. “I also don’t have anywhere else to be, not without him. And good morning to you too. Howʼs your arm today?” 

“I have an appointment today,” Owen confirms. Carlos hears him stepping into the room — he can almost _feel_ Owen breathing deeply in before he takes a seat on a chair right beside Carlos. “They will most likely take this thing off.” 

Carlos nods absentmindedly. He looks up at Owen briefly, smiling sadly when Owen shoots him a tired smile of his own. “There’s been no change,” he says, the words foreign in his mouth as they roll off his tongue. “I don't know what else to do.” 

Owen reaches out to squeeze Carlosʼ hand. It’s a gesture made to soothe him, but Carlos canʼt help the uneasy feeling creeping up his spine. “TK is a fighter,” Owen reminds him. “Heʼll pull through.” 

“But the doctors—” 

“The doctors said I wouldn’t survive cancer,” Owen interrupts him. “When I relapsed, they didn’t think I’d make it. You both were my support back then, and I made it through. Against all odds.” 

The rest goes unsaid, but Carlos hears it all the same. Owen doesn’t need to talk about the long chemo sessions and the longer blank nights while he fought the waves of nausea, until cancer left his system. He’s not free of it — there’s a high chance of it resurfacing later in his life — but Carlos knows that, should the disease threaten them again, they would face it together again. 

Like the family they have become, the family that's slowly disintegrating before his eyes. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Owen insists with the tiredness of someone who's been repeating those words over and over, only for them to meet the wall that's Carlosʼ guilt. “You know that, even if you refuse to acknowledge it.” 

“It was me driving,” Carlos mutters. “It was _me_.” 

“It wasn't you who chose to get drunk and drive over the limit,” Owen insists crudely. “It wasn't your choice to slam your truck against a car that was stopped at a red light.” 

“It isn’t me on that bed,” Carlos retaliates, finally finding his voice. “Maybe it wasn't _my_ car that crashed into another, but it sure as hell feels like the price everyone had to pay is way too high for it to have been just an accident that wasn't my fault.” 

He remembers the blinding lights colliding into the car while they were laughing at some joke TK had told — Owen in the back seat, TK in the passengerʼs seat, Carlos himself turned toward them because they were halted at a light — and then they simply weren’t. 

The taste of iron in his mouth is almost unbearable. 

“TK is a fighter,” Owen repeats. “We just need to keep the faith.” 

“Itʼs difficult,” Carlos whispers, tears already welling up in his eyes. “How can you be so collected, how many times—God, Owen, how many times has he put you through _this_?” 

Objectively, Carlos knows that TK hasn’t been on a hospital bed so many times. There were the two overdoses before they even knew each other, and then there was the shooting for which Carlos had been around — the moment that almost made him lose his faith in the powers that be — and then there have been several minor scraps here and there, gifts of a job that’s both rewarding and deathly.

Owen shakes his head. “Overdosing isn’t the same as being involved in an accident or being shot by a kid. I can't imagine what kind of mess I would be, if it were my spouse on that bed.” 

“Itʼs your son on the bed!” Carlos cries out. He’s tired of dancing around this issue, on top of the rest of things they don’t speak about — TKʼs sobriety, Owenʼs tendency to hide his ailments, Carlosʼ stubbornness in taking care of them despite himself — and heʼs not about to let this topic go. TK is his husband, has been for a few years now, but Owen is his father. There’s no winner in this contest — there’s no contest at all. They both lose.

Theyʼre both losing TK within each day he doesn’t wake up. 

“I know,” Owen refuses to take the bait. “But I have made my peace with the fact that, in our line of work, I could lose my son sooner than he could lose me. He’s always been reckless.”

“But this isn't something work-related!” Carlos insists, throwing his hands up in the air to show his defeat. “I could understand this at the job, it was hard when he got shot but at least there was—there was—” 

“A reason?” the older man supplies. “There’s never a rhyme or reason, Carlos. Iʼm sorry you're going through this, but I am here for you.” 

Carlos doesn’t say anything, instead focusing once again on TK on the bed, the machines breathing for him, pumping the blood in his veins — keeping him _alive_. There’s a lull in their conversation; Owen doesn’t say anything else, probably too emotional to keep talking, when all hell breaks loose.

All of a sudden, without any kind of warning, all the lights in the room — all the lights in the _whole_ hospital — shut down, casting shadows over them as Carlos clutches TK’s limp hand tighter in between his fingers. He knows the machines have their own backup system, but it still startles him when they all start beeping out of control, a different beat to their noises — more urgent, more insistent.

“What’s going on?” Owen demands, standing up and running to the door. Carlos watches as he frees his mostly-healed arm from the sling and opens the door so he can peek outside.

TK isn’t moving, but Carlos knows that there’s a limit to how long the machines can work on their own before crashing without electricity. 

“Owen,” he calls out. “What’s going on?” he echoes the words from before, but his father-in-law doesn’t reply. 

He hears a ruckus outside, and when he forces himself to look up from TK, he can see doctors and nurses running around the corridors. There are shouts; Carlos sees Owen wincing when he has to take a step backward to keep from being pushed out of their way. 

“This is crazy,” Owen tells him from his vantage spot in the threshold. “It seems the generator is working, but I don't know for how long.”

Carlos nods curtly. He knows how hard it is for Owen to witness such a situation and not switch into first responder mode. He feels the same, but neither can be of any help right now — Owen is still recovering from his injured arm, and Carlos suffocates whenever he thinks of walking away from that bed. 

They would be just liabilities. 

That doesn’t mean his skin isn’t itching with the need to jump into action. 

“All we can do is hope that electricity comes back soon,” Owen wishes, turning back into the room with a resigned rictus in his lips. 

Carlos nods again, instinctively tightening his grip around TKʼs unresponsive fingers. And of course, because it's just his luck, that's the moment the machines tethering TK to this world choose to crash. 

It sounds as though they have entered a fire station in the midst of an urgent call — everything is beeping loudly and Carlos can see the monitor showing TKʼs heart rate going crazy with blinking lights. A loaded sense of dread pools in his gut. 

“Owen!” he cries out, stressed and confused. 

One moment he was talking to TK, trying to dismiss Owenʼs worries about his own health, wishing he could just touch his husband the way he wants to. And now. 

Now he might have jinxed everything, his own greed jeopardizing TKʼs chances of recovery. 

Objectively, Carlos knows that this is an accident, just like the event that brought them all to the hospital in the first place. But he canʼt help feeling like heʼs guilty of this situation — his therapist would have a field day if he knew. Carlos will tell him, probably, when this is all over. 

He doesn’t want to think about what else he may be recovering from, once the power is back and they all assess everything they've lost. 

He doesn’t want to think about what heʼs been losing ever since that fateful night. 

Carlos is shaken out of his stupor by a doctor and three nurses who irrupt into the room following Owenʼs shouts. He’s pushed out of the chair and back until he collides against the nearest wall. Out of their way, he watches as the doctor barks out orders and the nurses flash around for a minute before stopping to watch the monitors once again. 

Carlos doesn’t understand. The monitors are still blinking, the lack of power preventing them from their duties of keeping TK alive, but the doctor lifts one hand and the nurses stop. He leans in until his ear is almost touching TKʼs _heaving_ chest. 

It looks like TKʼs lungs are working on their own. 

“Doctor?” Owen speaks up, a whole world of doubt and hope conveyed in those two syllables that could break Carlos or mend him.

The fluorescent lights come back to life, casting away the shadows with which darkness had covered them. The picture is clearer this time — TKʼs chest is moving, and there was no machine helping him to function. 

Carlos thinks the air in the room has been sucked away suddenly, for now, he is the one who can't breathe properly. He doesn’t want to believe that his dream could become true — he doesn’t think he could survive the crash and burn of being wrong. 

But TKʼs chest is _moving_. 

“He’s breathing,” the doctor who’s barrelled inside mutters in awe. Carlos blinks, unable to tear his gaze off TK’s prone form still on the bed, the machines useless by his side. “He’s breathing on his own.”

“What—what does that mean?” Owen beats him to ask. Carlos holds his breath, not wanting to let his hopes up.

“There might be a chance,” the doctor tells them. “We have to run some tests, but if he doesn’t need the machines to breathe, there might be a chance of recovery.”

And suddenly, the air in the room feels breathable again. Carlos slides down to the floor, his back still against the wall, his hands raking through his longish hair. As the monitors, hooked back to TK’s arms, start beeping once again, this time to the pace TK’s setting, Carlos exhales.

He allows himself to be hopeful, just this once.


End file.
